Audio 2:55
Celebration for the the 40th anniversary of Whitlam's 'It's Time' speech

Timothy McDonaldUpdated
Wed Nov 14 08:24:00 EST 2012

Few speeches in Australia's political history have embodied a generational and political shift like Gough Whitlam's 'It's Time' speech. It's now 40 years since that speech was delivered. Last night, the party faithful gathered to celebrate at the Blacktown Civic Centre in Western Sydney where he laid out Labor's policies for the 1972 election.

Transcript

TONY EASTLEY: For dyed in the wool Labor supporters few political speeches seem to embody the party's values like Gough Whitlam's "It's Time" speech.

It's now 40 years on and last night the party faithful gathered to celebrate at the civic centre in Western Sydney where Gough Whitlam laid out Labor's policies for the 1972 election.

AM's Timothy McDonald was there.

(Music from the campaign: "It's Time")

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: The Campbelltown Performing Arts High School Choir helped out Patricia Amphlett who appeared in the original It's Time campaign ad. It went down well in a room full of Labor faithful, many of whom had a vivid recollection of the 1972 election and the generational shift it seemed to embody.

PATRICIA AMPHLETT: Yes, it's time....

VOX POP 1: I was driving round in my Beetle and I had my surfboard on the car and I was coming back from a pub in the city. And I remember turning on the radio late at night on Saturday and hearing that Gough had won and Labor had been successful. And I was over the moon - even though I wasn't politically aware, I just knew that something had changed.

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: It was a few weeks before the election that Gough Whitlam delivered his famous speech at Bowman Hall in Blacktown in Sydney's west.

Few remember that night more vividly than the former prime minister Bob Hawke.

BOB HAWKE: We were assembled here in a room which was I believe supposed to hold about a thousand. There were a thousand and a half crammed into it and hundreds outside. It was just seething with excitement.

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: The man who's credited with putting pen to paper, Graham Freudenberg, says the speech has stood the test of time.

GRAHAM FREUDENBERG: Gough's last words in this speech - and you heard them tonight in this hall - are as relevant as they were at the glorious moment they were first uttered 40 years ago. And those words were:

GOUGH WHITLAM (archival): I do not for a moment believe that we should set limits on what we can achieve together for our country, for our people, for our future. (Applause and cheering)

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Of course the speech wasn't universally applauded. Graham Freudenberg says one newspaper editorial even compared it to the Nuremberg rallies.

But the mood in the room last night was nostalgic as the party faithful remembered a time when it seemed Labor was on the cusp of something big.

Current political circumstances might not muster the same kind of excitement but Bob Hawke doesn't believed nostalgia for a bygone era suggests that Labor can't still move with the times.

BOB HAWKE: I don't know that it's wistfulness. I think we look back and get inspiration from the way in which Gough worked to make the Labor Party relevant in the changing circumstances of society.